08/03/2006

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Frankfurter Rundschau, 08.03.2006

"As woman and womb, I am the social glue. Where should I stick myself?" Elke Buhr is not really impressed by Frank Schirrmacher's book "Minimum", in which the author expresses the hope that women will lead Germany out of its birthrate crisis. Her conclusion: "An anti-child and childless society is really not a nice place to live, but it won't get any better if it barricades itself in fear behind resentments and class barriers. And why do we have to take the short-cut through biology and brain stems when what we're trying to describe is in fact a social problem? Probably because that gets you elegantly back to women, who Schirrmacher, for strictly biological reasons, makes responsible for finding a way out of the crisis. Der Spiegelsummarises Schirrmacher's ode thus: women as a sex are tougher, they exude selflessness and the willingness to sacrifice, they are needed as social glue."

Die Welt, 08.03.2006

In the run-up to the elections in Congo, writerHans Christoph Buchtells of his experiences in the huge country which was exploited by Sese Seko Mobutu from 1965 Ã¢â¬â 1997. "The word corruption doesn't do justice to his regime. Cleptocracy
is better. When I landed in Kinshasa in 1986, I was led into the
airport restaurant kitchen without a passport or customs check, where
the head of protocol asked if I wanted to purchase smuggled diamonds.
A delegation of the Zairian writers' association was waiting for me
under a banner that read 'The nouveau beaujolais has arrived!' Mobut
had renamed Congo Zaire, and ordered that all citizens wear a sort of
Mao-type uniform called the abacost (from 'a bas le costume!' -
down with suits!), with a high collar relatively unsuited to the
tropical heat. It goes without saying that the abacost factory that clothed the entire
population of Zaire belonged to the Mobutu clan."

Die Tageszeitung, 08.03.2006

Marius Babias unpacks the debate (more) about the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection which, for him, represents a disastrous step towards a "normalised discourse."
With the loan of his collection, Flick has bought himself favour,
respect and significance. "The money comes back to him in a discursive
form. His accomplices: the submissive middle-men, the rapidly purchased post-avant-garde artists and the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, which turned the Hamburger Bahnhof museum into a showcase of the new German self-image. Flick doesn't give anything, Flick takes and enjoys:
the attention, the recognition, the liveliness of the conflict. With
the old timers he used to collect, he would not have been granted the
best seat in the theatre of the Berlin Republic, whose heart of darkness beats in his breast."

Berliner Zeitung, 08.03.2006

Detlev Buck's most recent film "Knallhart" (Tough Enough), which opened at the Berlinale, is set in one of Berlin's touhgest neighbourhoods, Neukölln. In an interview, he explains why. "For me it wasn't about 'slumming' and I don't see Neukölln as socially cold. I like colourful places where people from different nations live together, because that's become quite normal Ã¢â¬â which many people seem not to have noticed. When all these nations meet in one city, there's contact. I prefer Neukölln to the old quarters of the past. Neukölln is young, fast and direct. The area isn't foreign to me, otherwise I wouldn't have made a film there. You can't go in there as celebrity voyeur."

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 08.03.2006

Christian Maria Beer writes on the revival of first-generation German pop authorsHubert Fichte, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann and Jörg Fauser. For Beer, the rediscovery of these "rebels and flaneurs" is "an absolute sign of coolness.(...)
But the grandfathers of German pop literature differ from their
successful grandchildren in one key respect. Certainly, Fauser and
Brinkmann also focused on classical pop themes like drugs, sex,
parties, music and above all everyday life. But their relation to their
surroundings was entirely different. What they wrote was also a
reaction to post-war society. Their texts were Ã¢â¬â who would use such an
expression today Ã¢â¬â socially critical."See our feature "Ladies and gentlemen, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann"

The paper dedicates an entire page to strange and obsolete musical instruments. Among them is the arpeggione, "a bastard instrument, meant to be both plucked and played with a bow. It was created by Johann Georg Staufer in Vienna around 1823, while Peter Teufelsdorfer
created a similar instrument in Pest around the same time. The strange
blend of guitar and cello fit in well in that time when early romantic
sensibilities were longing for etherial, magical sounds."

Another instrument featured is the bayan: "Originally a bayan was a Russian bard. But the tradition had already died out when Petersburg instrument maker Pjotr Sterligov
presented an astonished public with his button-harmonica, the bayan. It
differed from the better-known accordion in that it had only buttons
and no keyboard.... While the accordion is considered more of a folksy
instrument in Germany, in Russia the bayan ranks among the serious
classical instruments. That can be seen in the work of Sofia Gubaidulina,
born 1931, who uses it in her most famous works. 'Seven Words,' from
1982, which sets in music Christ's last words on the cross with immense pain and emotion, was composed for string orchestra, solo cello and bayan."

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksÃÂ ÃÂ about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more